At the request of Health Ministry leaders, seeking further information to provide them with a deeper knowledge on a variety of digital health technologies topics, TECHNATION is organizing a series of Health TECH Talks. This opportunity provides TECHNATION members the opportunity to present their experts and expertise on the various topics.
TECHNATION Health Talks are by invitation only and Health Ministry leadership and their teams from across the country are invited to attend.
If you are interested in the presentation and/or sponsorship opportunities, please contact Elaine Huesing at ehuesing@technationcanada.ca.
TECHNATION Health TECH Talks will cover some of the following areas:
- Swarm/edge/quantum/cloud computing
- Consumer generated data (and its relationship to healthcare)
- Ransomware attacks and cybersecurity
- AI/Machine learning and synthetic data
- Blockchain for healthcare: Smart contracts, Digital record-keeping, Control and access to digital records
Past Health TECH Talks
Data Unleashed: Turning Insights into Action in Healthcare – January 24, 2025
Industry Expert and Executive from Marshall Health Network will provide participants a view into valuable tools and strategies that can help modernize the care delivery experience across the entire health system—spanning providers to governments.
Intelligent, highly scalable, cloud-based suite of healthcare solutions help unlock the value of health data by integrating front-line, back-office, and health network coordination solutions and can replace multiple point solutions for health systems, such as BI tools, CRMs, and data warehouses, with a single, comprehensive operating platform. With this, organizations can strive to improve patient care and foster a more sustainable healthcare ecosystem.
Marshall Health Network spoke about their experience and how utilizing these solutions have helped them transform insights into action.
The Health TECH Talk is free to attend, and we welcome CIO’s and Digital health teams from any public sector teams, healthcare organizations and other stakeholder organizations.
Christopher L. Schafer, Director, Population Health Analytics, Marshall Health Network
As the Director of Population Health Analytics, Christopher oversees the implementation and optimization of multiple population health applications across the Marshall Health Network. His portfolio includes the Oracle Health Data Intelligence suite. In this role, he assumes end-to-end responsibility for operationalizing each product line, collaborating with MHN stakeholders and industry subject matter experts. By translating population health business requirements into actionable product capabilities, he delivers insights that drive improved health outcomes.
Jeremy Young, Lead Strategic Development Executive, Health Network – Federal & Canada, Oracle Health
Jeremy Young is Oracle Health’s Market Lead for Global and North America Public Sector health organizations. Since 2008, he has worked with healthcare organizations and large employers worldwide, supporting new care models and population health strategies in over 35 countries. Representing Oracle Health, Jeremy has contributed to national and local health programs across Canada, Australasia, the Middle East, Latin America, and U.S. federal agencies, including the Department of Defense, Veterans Affairs, CMS, HHS, and the Indian Health Service.
Regional Data Hubs – Current Trends and Benefits – June 26, 2024
Industry experts will provide valuable insights into current trends and benefits being realized around the utilization of Regional Health Data Hubs. Presenters will provide a deeper dive into how health capacity management, health data sharing, and health data governance can be significantly improved through the use of these advanced data platform hubs. Presentations will also provide lessons learned from other Canadian and international jurisdictions who have accomplished successful and improved outcomes, overcoming similar local and regional privacy concerns and have dealt with competing priorities, fragmented systems and governance issues.
Jason Scarlett, PEng, PhD, Executive Director, Enterprise Data Engineering, Data & Analytics, Alberta Health Services
Jason serves as the Executive Director of Enterprise Data Engineering at Alberta Health Services (AHS) with a focus on acquiring, enhancing, and sharing enterprise data sets and analytic tools. His passion lies in democratizing data and crafting compelling narratives through analytics. Jason earned his PhD in Engineering from the Schulich School of Engineering in 2007, achieving recognition through both academic and conference awards. Additionally, he has been distinguished with the Queens Jubilee Medal for his exceptional contributions to Alberta. Outside of work, he endeavors to involve his wife and four children in a multitude of never-ending home improvement projects including a garage climbing wall.
Marc Koehn, Managing Director, Health Practice Lead (Canada)
Marc Koehn is a seasoned executive with extensive experience in the technology and consulting industry, including the leadership of high-performing professional services organizations. He currently leads Accenture’s Health Industry Strategy & Consulting practice in Canada and thrives on helping clients solve thorny challenges and break through new performance frontiers. Prior to joining Accenture, he was CEO of Gevity a privately held international boutique professional services firm.
Marc holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Victoria, a Master of Business Administration from Simon Fraser University, and has completed both the Leading Professional Services Firms (Harvard Business School) and Leading Digital Transformation in Healthcare (Harvard Medical School) programs. He is an Information Technology Certified Professional (ITCP) as well as a Certified Professional in Healthcare Information and Management Systems – Canada (CPHIMS-CA). Based in Victoria, British Columbia, Marc and his wife Yvonne are proud parents of two daughters pursuing STEM careers. Outside of work Marc loves to travel and to participate in sports that don’t feel like exercise, including biking, skiing, snowboarding, and soccer.
Joe Warbington, Healthcare Industry Principal, Snowflake
Joe Warbington is an Industry Principal for the Healthcare and Life Sciences practice at Snowflake, focusing on solutions and strategies for healthcare providers and health systems. He has worked with health technologies and data for over 18 years, starting at Epic, then Qlik Healthcare, and Vizlib / Astrato. He is passionate about population health and reducing clinician burnout.
Interoperability – November 30, 2023
TECHNATION thanks Oracle Health for their corporate citizenship in sponsoring the TECHNATION Health TECH Talk Series on Interoperability.
Industry experts provided a deeper understanding of the components needed for interoperability, what problems interoperability has solved for the healthcare industry and what are the key challenges left.
Michelle Brough, Interoperability Executive, Oracle Health
Michelle Brough enjoys the value of collaborative partnerships with clients and industry stakeholders. With over 20 years of international and domestic experience in both government and corporate environments, she is a champion of tangible results and has been responsible for the development and delivery of products/programs with national impact, including government initiatives (UK and US). From her healthcare IT beginnings in the UK’s National Health Service through to her current position at Oracle Health, Michelle continues to delight in collaborations that ultimately produce real benefits for patients and providers.
Hans J. Buitendijk, M.SC., FHL7, Director, Interoperability Strategy, Oracle Health
For more than 40 years Hans Buitendijk has been involved in the development of HIT Solutions, client consulting on strategic IT planning, health care application development and implementations, large scale business process re-engineering and systems integration, and complex project management, bridging the gap between business process optimization and IT support, as well as improving interoperability across HIT within and across organizations.
As Director of Interoperability Strategy at Oracle Health, Hans is primarily focused on establishing and propagating industry standards to enable interoperability across the diverse systems prevalent in health IT.
AI in Healthcare – September 14, 2023
TECHNATION thanks Oracle Health and Accenture for their corporate citizenship in sponsoring the TECHNATION Health TECH Talk Series on Generative AI, ML, and Large Language Models (LLMs).
Industry experts provided valuable insights and knowledge on the revolutionary strides that are shaping the future on the utilization of Generative AI, ML and Cloud technology in the healthcare sector. The presentations provided deeper knowledge to assist in adapting to this quickly changing landscape of leveraging data in new ways to navigate digital health enabled modes of care within your ecosystem.
Dr. Jigar Patel, a Senior Director in Healthcare Product Management
Dr. Patel excels in generating healthcare value, with a focus on ODA/OIC/OPA. He collaborates closely with product PMs to formulate, guide, and validate healthcare strategies, spearheads customer engagement, promotes solution adoption, and curates tailored external content.
Andrew Truscott, Global Health Technology Lead
Recognized globally as one of Accenture’s leading experts in solving the most complex technology problems and the planning of next-generation technology architecture. He possesses extensive healthcare industry experience and a track record of launching and growing technology practices. Experience includes full life-cycle system development and implementation, strategy and architecture development – coupled with a deep appreciation for the client operations.
Machine Learning to advance Health Systems – March 31, 2023
TECHNATION thanks Deloitte for their corporate citizenship in sponsoring and presenting our TECHNATION Health TECH Talk Series on AI/Machine learning and synthetic data.
Health TECH Talk discussed the evolving role of scenario planning, simulation modelling and the application of machine learning to advance evidence and data-based health system decision making. This topic further explored current and future trends in applying multi-dimensional models to anticipate impacts of interventions on operations.
Jason Garay, Partner and the Life Sciences and Healthcare and Government & Public Sector Industry Leader, Deloitte’s Omnia AI Practice
Prior to joining Deloitte, Jason was the Vice President of Analytics and Informatics at Cancer Care Ontario where he led the execution of collaborative initiatives to drive CCO’s first Data Strategy and inaugural Research Strategy. Jason also served as the Director of provincial Communicable Disease Control at Public Health Ontario where he led the development of provincial infectious disease surveillance and analytics. Jason’s expertise ranges across organization and provincial strategy development and implementation, partnership development and data and analytics transformation. Jason brings a deep understanding of Canada’s digital health and data landscape having worked across every level of the health care system, from hospital and local service providers to provincial agencies and the federal government supporting data management, governance, strategy and advanced analytics. An established healthcare and analytics executive and epidemiologist by background, Jason also holds a faculty appointment at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health.
Cyber Security and Ransom Ware – March 24, 2022
TECHNATION thanks IBM and Microsoft for their corporate citizenship in sponsoring and presenting our Inaugural TECHNATION Health TECH Talk Series on Cyber Security and Ransom Ware.
In response to the ever-increasing reports of attacks on hospitals and healthcare systems around the world and within Canada, this TECH Talk, provided a deep dive on the timely topic of Cyber Security and Ransom Ware.
Microsoft and IBM industry technology experts provided further knowledge for Ministry leaders to help their jurisdictions to adapt to this changing threat landscape, better work to leverage data in new ways so that their organizations can develop safe and secure digital health enabled modes of care.
James Ringold, Chief Security Advisor, Microsoft
James provided a brief threat overview and focused a deeper dive into foundations for a defensive strategy – including Zero Trust, Threat Protection and Cloud Security
Dan Taylor, IBM Global Healthcare & Life-sciences Industry Lead
Dan provided an overview of his international experience protecting client data and ensuring patient services as the Director of Security & CISO of the NHS Digital Health Service in UK and a deeper dive into Zero Trust architecture and how it supports digital trust with clients, operators and Boards.
